UITableViewCell - how to make right UILabel truncate instead of left one?

Question

I have created a UITableViewCell using UITableViewCellStyleValue1, which the Apple docs define as:

A style for a cell with a label on the left side of the cell with left-aligned and black text; on the right side is a label that has smaller blue text and is right-aligned. The Settings application uses cells in this style.

I am trying to set the cell text to display some short text on the left, and some long text on the right, e.g.

URL http://www.mylongurl.com/subdirectory/etc

My problem is that the left UILabel gets truncated instead of the right one so it displays as:

U... http://www.mylongurl.com/subdirectory/etc

If I make the URL even longer then BOTH the labels get truncated, e.g.

U... http://www.mylongurl.com...subdirectory/etc

Is there any way to make the right UILabel truncate instead of the left one without using a custom UITableViewCell? I know how to create a custom UITableViewCell, but it seems like overkill?

I can set the UILineBreakMode to change where the text truncates within the UILabel, but I can't see a way to make the detailTextLabel adjust its width to let the textLabel display itself.

[[lCell textLabel] setText:@"URL"];
[[lCell detailTextLabel] setText:@"http://www.mylongurl.com/subdirectory/etc"];
[[lCell detailTextLabel] setLineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeMiddleTruncation];

Answer 1

The best solution would be to create a subclass of UITableView cell and set your customizations to the labels like you have here in init. You will probably want to override layoutSubviews and resize the labels if you want the left one to be wider.

- (void)layoutSubviews {
    [super layoutSubviews];
    self.textLabel.frame = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 100.0, self.frame.size.height);
    self.detailTextLabel.frame = CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 220.0, self.frame.size.height);
}

Obviously those are arbitrary values. You will want to play with different sizes to meet your needs.

Answer 2

You have a couple of options.

Probably the closest in spirit to what you seem to be asking for is to muck around with the label frames in your UITableViewDelegate's tableView:willDisplayCell:forRowAtIndexPath:. (Doing cell layout modifications in your UITableViewDataSource's tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath: won't fly, since UITableViewCells do all their own internal layout work after tableView:cellForRowAtIndexPath:.) You can use NSString's -sizeWithFont: to help figure out the layout requirements for your textLabel.

You can also take different approaches, as you mentioned, such as subclassing UITableViewCell or setting cell.textLabel.adjustsFontSizeToFitWidth = YES.